In January, our One Readreading panel will begin narrowing down the list of more than 100 books nominated for our community-wide reading program. In the meantime, we are highlighting just some of these suggested titles so you can see what other local readers are enjoying.

Each year at least one local author’s book is nominated, and this year is no different. “The Weight of Blood” by Laura McHugh received multiple nominations. This suspenseful tale, set in the Ozarks, focuses on seventeen-year-old Lucy Dane and her mother Lila, who disappeared not long after Lucy’s birth. The discovery of the body of a long-missing school friend compels Lucy to look into both disappearances, but few are willing to help her. One of our nominators writes, “The book is a well-written mystery and a page-turner. It deals with the closed culture in southern Missouri, family secrets and human trafficking.”

Works of fiction with real historical settings allow us to explore a past time and place in an intimate way. The nominator of “The Chaperone” by Laura Moriarty feels that the community would enjoy experiencing 1920s New York.

Our nominator writes, “[This is] a fictional story inspired by a real-life movie star Louise Brooks. This novel follows the life of the woman who chaperoned Brooks from Wichita, KS to New York City at the start of her film career. This book will appeal to the community because it is a fascinating story and written in a manner that pulls you in from the first page. The characters are truly drawn and easy to connect with; I did not want to put this book down when I was reading it. I think it will inspire lots of discussion – about the ’20s in the US, women’s role in the country during that time, old-time movies and much more.”

Nominations for the 2015 One Read program are now closed, and we are highlighting just some of the titles area readers think the community should read together. Next up is “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel.

This novel opens with a famous Hollywood actor dying onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve as a fast-acting and deadly strain of the flu spreads around the world. Our nominator writes, “This is very different take on a well-worn narrative – post-apocalyptic fiction. The topic is timely (pandemic – echoes of Ebola), and the book is beautifully written. It’s about the importance of love and art, the social contract, and what matters when the world we know falls away.”

Well-reviewed and popular when first published in 2010, Piper Kerman’s best-selling memoir “Orange Is the New Black: My Year in A Women’s Prison” gained even more attention after Netflix launched a series based on the book. The narrative follows the author’s incarceration for drug trafficking, during which she gained a unique perspective on the criminal justice system and met a varied community of women living under exceptional circumstances.

The reader who nominated “Orange Is the new Black” for One Read writes, “This book is a very accurate and eye-opening description of life in a women’s prison. Discussion topics include: the war on drugs, the overpopulation of American prisons, women’s issues, prisoners’ rights, mental illness, incarceration and opportunities to volunteer in prisons. As a women’s prison volunteer myself, I highly recommend this book.”

Thank you to everyone who suggested books to be considered for the 2015 One Read program. As the reading panel begins its work, we will continue to highlight nominated titles so you can learn what others in the community are reading and discussing.

We continue our review of just some of the more than 100 books local readers nominated for next year’s One Read program. Next up is “The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing” by Jacob Mira. In this emotional and atmospheric debut, decades after an interrupted visit to his mother’s home in India triggers a haunting series of events, brain surgeon Thomas Eapen begins having conversations with his dead relatives, prompting his career-beleaguered wife to investigate a painful family history.

The nominator of this book describes it as “a book about about the uneasy generational divide among Indians in America and about family in all its permutations … Similar issues haunt immigrant families from everywhere.”